Also, how did Devil's Six Gun work out for you? I've been hesitant to run it due to the high cost and situational ability. In a long-term grinder deck like this it seems interesting due to being able to recur jokers, just wondering how well that worked out.

Non-game related, is "kang poon" a reference to something? I understand that you mean Shan Fan Showdown!, just wondering why you are using that nickname.

I have failed gadget pulls from the low value cards, and the initial version of the deck did have Prof. Aloysius Roe in it (it was actually a test to see if he made cows more viable). I found the deck was functional, but he was one of the worst parts of it (which is why he ended up cut). This decks win condition is to have a lot of money, and lowering your income from 3 to 2 hurts your ramp.

Related note, but I do often keep tabs on my discard pile with this deck, and will hold off inventing if my deck contains too much risk. And Arnold Stewart is great from giving a degree of control over this. If your deck is feeling risky, use Arnold before inventing to try and pull out some of that risk. If the deck is feeling safe, hold off on Arnold until after inventions. Of course you will still fail from time to time, but it also isn't just blind luck if you keep your eye on it.

Also, you're looking to pull the cows out of the deck first with Technological Exhibition. Getting a Force Field on a guy is high priority, but, outside that, getting the fails out of the deck is important. The neglected Harold Aimslee is also great for this once you have enough bank to warrant his obscene cost.

Devil's Six Gun was okay. This deck isn't overly tight (rocking a 15/15 draw structure), so the stud / bullet bonus helps. The CR has been useful. It adds some real punch to FF up to 4-of-a-kind, Devil's to 5, and then CV/INWYK to put them down 3/4. But they are also more or less just there for the draw structure and not super necessary. I would slot them over anything else on the 9 of hearts (De Annulos Mysteriis would be interesting but I feel worse).

I forgot the name of Shan Fan Showdown! and just used the first two words that came to my head.

I should also add that this deck works as well as it does in my meta because people for some reason just stopped running force-fight cards (such as Kidnappin'). Generally, they make decks that want to smash face, but don't include cards that let them smash face on their terms (an odd paradigm). So I just durdle until I have the stronger board state and they lose. One of our players actually gets extremely mad that I "don't do anything" for 30 minutes (which is generally true insofar as I normally make decks that don't want to fight), but he doesn't seem to pick up on the fact that that is his fault, not mine.

I did include both Agent Provocateur and Jacqueline Isham to give myself defense against force fight, but it turned out to be wholly unnecessary. I'd be curious to see how this performs in other metas.